Pale Calm
by Tawnya Kisaragi
Summary: A small exposition on a small pale moment between Gamzee and Karkat.


A gift for my matesprit who has an unhealthy love for Gamzee.

~Tawnya

* * *

One of the unexpected blessings of paranoia was heightened senses. Granted, there were still a lot of ways that said senses could and would be tricked, but the increased acuity did help more than it hindered. Movement became easier to spy. Intent was easier to judge. Thoughts moved quicker and memories stayed longer. Sounds remained sharp and crisp no matter how softly they were made. Karkat was a particularly paranoid troll, partly by nature, partly by design. Stupidity would have led to early culling, and while in hindsight he always thought he was rather stupid, he wasn't so much unintelligent as he was impatient. He knew he was impatient, and paranoid, and very partial to living, and thusly trained himself to use his fear as a weapon rather than being crippled by it.

It was rather hard, however, to deal with the constant influx of people in the lab as a result. What had kept him safe on Alternia was slowly driving him mad on the asteroid. Coupled with his normal insomnia, it created a certain level of hell best suited to traitors, telemarketers, and assholes who thought they had any business trying to be a leader. And it wasn't like he could just leave, either. Couldn't go hole up in the section of the labs he'd claimed as his until the twitching calmed and the visceral ache of too much adrenaline subsided. No, he was apparently the only one who cared about what was to come next, so the majority of trolling responsibility lay with him, trying to keep the idiot humans from fucking things up even worse than they already were. That meant he had to stay near a computer.

Sollux solved the connectivity issue by building one down in the (not so) secret room he also kept his beehive mainframes. He claimed it was a test to see if the two techs could integrate, but Karkat knew that was a lie. The lab ran off its own supply of power and server space. It wasn't connected to anything they could physically find, and they had tried. The agriframes were unneeded and only kept for the same reasons Kanaya carried around the Matriorb—it was a bit of the world they had left behind that would make their new world that much easier to call home. Considering how nonchalantly it was all mentioned, Karkat didn't call his friend on the fib.

Splitting his time between his rooms and the lab worked out pretty well, all things considered. He could still hound people into doing what he needed them to do while avoiding the active ailments that tend to plague the paranoid. He made a small pile that was relatively comfortable to sit in next to the computer and enjoyed his isolation.

That didn't mean his senses suffered for it. He heard the steps long before they reached his room, a half-dragging slide on the metal floors. Everybody had a different step, a different gait that he'd memorized long ago, so he knew who was approaching. (It also helped that only two others knew the long way to him, but there was always a chance someone else would stumble upon this little piece of his space.) Karkat kept typing, trying to hurry through the majority of what he was doing before he gained company. He paused slightly when he heard the first honk, then swore under his breath has he backspaced out the gibberish he'd managed to write.

The second honk was much closer, more questioning. They probably sound all the same to the others regardless of whether the noise was produced by the squawkblister or an actual horn, but Karkat could hear the inflection, the intonation, and the message behind each one. There were only about two dozen individual types that could then be blended together into a variety of meanings and contexts. The second one was, like the first, a type of echo-location. Gamzee was looking for him with rather pointed interest, considering how that extra half-second came out. Karkat dug through the pile for a minute to find something solid, which he then promptly chucked across the room. The whatever thunked heavily against both the wall and then the floor. The third honk was softer; a simple acknowledgement, before the drag-shuffle picked up again.

He knew the minute Gamzee opened the door to his hiding spot. There was the soft hum of the automations sliding metal smoothly, seamlessly, and the rush of slightly cooler air that brushed the back of his neck. The lingering tang of sopor mixed with the sweetness of honeycomb and stuck to the back of his throat. There was only silence from the troll himself, however, so Karkat didn't acknowledge his presence. A rather stupid game to play, trying to pretend that he didn't know Gamzee was around, especially after throwing something to gain attention. They'd play it anyway. Plausible deniability was everything.

"Honk." Soft, quiet, a sound that slid right between the layers of bee drowning and computer static so that it might be overlooked. Questioning, asking, and maybe even a little hopeful. A sound no one else could pick out unless they were listening for it in the first place.

Karkat didn't look up from his screen. "Get the fuck in before the goddamn bees escape."

The bees have a specified home range and have been using the air ducts since Sollux first dumped the damn things to do whatever the hell they've been doing. Only someone who knew how the beehive mainframes worked would recognize the stupidity of the remark, but Gamzee didn't and thus the threat worked. He shuffled in, but it wasn't until after the door hissed closed again that Karkat looked to him.

…He doesn't look well. At a glance, he's still the same Gamzee he's always been, with his never been touched with a brush wild hair, shoulder rolled slouch, glassy eyes and perpetually high smile. The smile's strained, though, faltering slightly at the corners into something less relaxed and more self-depreciating. His eyes are glassed over from exhaustion and fever bright behind that, subtly shifting focus from out to in and back again. That lanky frame that proves he's going to be built like a monster when he's an adult has become actively hunched down in an attempt to make himself smaller as a whole. His hair's never met a brush, but fingers have certainly combed, tugged, ripped through it repeatedly in an aggravated gesture. Minute differences that mean everything, gone the second the attention has been noted, covered up as easily as smearing on grease paint.

"Hey there, best friend." His voice has become rougher, tumbling less like waves over rocks and more like he's gargled boulders for a week, like he hasn't used it much in a while. "Room in that motherfucking pile for another brother?"

Like hell there was room in that pile, barely for Karkat and certainly not for someone as all limb as Gamzee. But one body moved in invitation and the other followed. The only comfortable way to fit the miracle speaker in left him draped over most of the pile, long legs still stretching out over the bare floor and his head in Karkat's lap. Karkat himself sat off to the far side, barely able to say he was actually in the pile anymore, one hand still typing away while the other absently stroked over whatever it could reach.

Everything stayed quiet between them, save for the click of keys, the drone of the bees, and the soft, under the breath swearing that was Karkat sorting out what he wanted to say next. There wasn't a need for words in this instance, so he didn't waste his breath and Gamzee didn't try to intrude. Another thing no one else would probably understand, how the two biggest talkers in the group could possibly have a pale moment without trying to talk one another's aural sponges off. Most of their moments were like that, though, a steadfast realignment that there was still something solid and stable in the world, that there was an anchor waiting for them should they need one before they drowned in whatever was bothering them. That quiet wasn't something to be feared.

Slowly, the tension drained out of the purple blood, little hitchy things that resembled something more like the snipping of overly wrought wires than the smooth relaxation of muscles. His breath evened, deepened, and bit by bit became something less forced and something more natural. Fingers play over the horns, through the hair, under the chin to splay across the willing offered throat, down to press lightly over the hollow created where the collarbones meet. The interaction seemed thoughtless, distracted, but Karkat had always been the best type of multitasker, so he always knew where his hand was while he continued to type away angry walls of grey text. Something to be soothing when those twitches became tremors, a warming gesture of affection for unsteady breaths, the possessive curl that reaffirmed safety and security, and then the rest that centered, recalibrated, and grounded them both. Over and over, until the routine become more than the simple shooshing and papping exercise of moirails, and settled into the visceral throes of pale love that didn't require any sort of expression in order to be known.

Time had become an indistinct thing since they entered the game. A situation that had only become worse now that everyone was stuck on this meteor in the middle of paradox space, where things like time were more like squiggly lines and suggestions than stock, calculated fact. The whole concept lost meaning for the two of them as the jagged edges pressing under both their skins wore off. The typing slowed until it stopped all together. Calm breaths came out as shallow honks. One body relaxed, and then the other began to as well. Karkat didn't realize he'd stopped doing much of anything until a Trollian ping snapped him out of his reverie. Paranoia instantly kicked in and said that he should respond to the message, if only to tell whomever to fuck off, just as it told him he was vulnerable and thus that his palemate was even more so. But at that particular moment, paranoia and all its little foibles were easier to forget, ignore. A hard command turned off the sound on his computer. The rest of the group could deal for a while on their own, and if things really got hairy, Sollux knew how to find them.

Gamzee was well and truly asleep in his lap, face smooth once more under his make-up, all the little cracks once more sealed up and healed over. At least, they were for the time being. Their hands had tangled up at some point over the clown's blood pusher, the grip solid, yet still tender and careful. Being careful not to disturb the other, Karkat stretched out a bit more comfortably; the leg under Gamzee's heavy head was already starting to go to sleep and his ass had been numb for a while now from sitting on the floor, but they were minor issues compared to the general calm that had pervaded through the room. With an unconscious small smile, Karkat continued to comb his free fingers through his moirail's hair, letting himself forget about anything else.

It could wait. Everything else could just wait.

* * *

Owari


End file.
